Source: BBC News
The ongoing war in Ukraine, along with the threat to NATO from Russia has brought forward a new development. The escalations have inspired Germany to warn its citizens against the use of the antivirus software, Kaspersky. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) of Germany published an alert. The alert prompts citizens of Germany to switch the Kaspersky antivirus for another replaceable security product. The headquarters of the antivirus software is situated in Russia. For a rather long time, Kaspersky has faced accusations of being connected to the Kremlin.
The main concern of the BSI is Putin’s regime possibly forcing Kaspersky to carry out malicious activities like surveillance against customers for Russia’s benefit. Owing to threats to EU and NATO, Germany reportedly suspects an IT attack which could possibly have drastic repercussions. Kaspersky, on the other hand, called the allegations unfounded and rather based on “political grounds.”
As Kaspersky has always advocated for its products, it is true that BSI’s warning has no such technical basis. However, the agency stated that they could not disregard the risk of a potential cyberattack from Russia through the company. The German agency specifies how the company’s “extensive system authorisations” could be possibly abused by the Kremlin. Moreover, Kaspersky’s Chief Executive never having to cast much blame on Kremlin for the Ukrainian invasion is a rather contributing factor to the suspicions.
Kaspersky counters that it’s a “private company [that] does not have any ties to the Russian or any other government.”
Kaspersky also specifies that their “data processing infrastructure” was relocated in the year 2018 to Switzerland. Since the relocation, files of malicious or suspicious nature shared by users of Kaspersky in Germany are processed at two centres. These data centres are located in Zurich and provide world-class facilities. These facilities guarantee best forms of security and are in “compliance with industry standards.” The company also enables government agencies and enterprise customers to review its source code of leading products as its transparency tool.
Crucially, this is not the first instance of a government having warned against the use of the products of Kaspersky. Previously, the US banned the antivirus from federal systems in 2017. They claimed that the Russian law possibly paved way for the Kremlin to ask or “compel assistance from Kaspersky.” The request could be for providing customer data moving through networks in Russia.
Just prior to the ban, Kaspersky had admitted that their antivirus software had downloaded secret tools for hacking by accident. These tools were essentially from the US National Security Agency owing to the files being tagged as malware on the personal computer of NSA contractor.
